Preparing for inevitable technological disruption

Practical steps we can take today to prepare for the technological disruptions of tomorrow

By Rohit Talwar Steve Wells and Alexandra Whittington Fast Future

Fundamental changes are taking place in the way organisations are using technology. Many are embarking on radical digital overhauls to enable them to deliver new offerings, enhance service, improve efficiency, and increase cost competitiveness. The process of digital transformation is likely to spread across the business world and the harsh reality is that widescale automation will inevitably lead to job reductions across everything from mining and the manufacturing industries to transport and the legal sector.

In parallel, new sectors are of course emerging and creating opportunities – but no one yet knows if they will generate enough jobs to replace those displaced by technology. Some estimates suggest that over the next 20 years up to 80 per cent of all current jobs could be digitised while others estimate that for every new job created three to four could be eliminated elsewhere.

Rohit Talwar

The future could be a very exciting place where we tackle a lot of current challenges in society and create new opportunities. New industry sectors such as laboratory grown food, vertical farming, autonomous vehicles, clean water technologies, renewable energy, and synthetic materials all hold out great possibilities for humanity. However, these businesses will be highly automated from the outset, and will require very different capabilities and a highly skilled workforce. The transition to these new roles will not be smooth for the production worker, shift manager, warehouse assistant, sales person, truck driver, or even lawyer whose jobs are at risk.

The temptation and tendency to ‘wait and see’ because the challenges seem so immense could be calamitously risky. The change when it happens will cascade and accelerate rapidly, leaving unprepared governments, businesses, societies, and individuals overwhelmed and paralysed. It is far better to anticipate impending shocks and risks and act now to start putting society on a more sustainable footing – thus ensuring it is resilient enough to cope with the risk of large scale technological unemployment.

We believe there are five fundamental actions that forward looking governments should be taking right now.

Experimenting with guaranteed basic incomes and services

The firms doing the job automation need customers to buy their goods and services. Hence, we see many in Silicon Valley arguing for some

Steve Wells

form of automation tax to fund the provision of universal guaranteed basic incomes (UBI) and services (UBS) to everyone in society. Some governments refuse to countenance the idea on ideological grounds because they think it reeks of communism. However, others are recognising that something needs to be done to avoid large scale social decline and potential citizen unrest. Hence, many countries including Finland, Germany and Canada are undertaking UBI experiments to understand the concept, assess the social impact, measure the costs and prepare themselves while they still have time.

A massive expansion of support for start-up creation

People will inevitably have to take more control of their own destiny. One way is to create their own job or small business that is far more immune to risks of technology replacing humans. A massive expansion of support for start-up creation would both generate jobs for the mentors and accelerate the rate at which people can build new businesses and create new jobs.

Research and development in key knowledge sectors

A competitive economy demands cutting edge innovation. A safe society requires research and development on the materials and processes that will enable that. Not all R&D lends itself to assessment based on the return on investment – some just have to be undertaken for the betterment of society. Hence, expanding research funding and the number of places is an important enabler of tomorrow’s job creation.

Rethinking education at every level

Success in the future will require a smart, adaptable and highly educated workforce. Indeed, many commentators and some governments anticipate that, within a decade, most new jobs will require a graduate level of education as a minimum. How that is acquired may well look very different to today.

Alexandra Whittington

To survive and thrive we think and believe everyone will need to understand both the technologies and the mindsets shaping the future. There are lots of technological competitors to Uber and AirBnB – but their true point of difference is their mindset – that is, a radically different way of thinking about how you deliver on customer desires without owning any assets or employing any of the service delivery staff. We also need to help people develop higher level skills that will help them learn rapidly and transition into jobs that don’t even exist today. These include collaboration, problem solving, navigating complexity, scenario thinking, and accelerated learning.

Hence, we believe we need a massive increase in the provision of free adult education using existing facilities at schools and higher education institutions for delivery, where most of the teaching spaces are unused in the evening. We also need to reduce pupil-teacher ratios at school level to help with personalised support – the evidence is clear on the impact. This also means looking at the charges imposed on students pursuing higher education because we need a well-educated workforce to propel the country forward. Many nations are beginning to provide free degree level education to ensure future generations aren’t demotivated, disillusioned and saddled with debts that they cannot repay.

Addressing the mental health challenge

Across society, the scale and severity of mental health issues is rising. Large scale job displacement will only increase that. An enlightened approach would be to fund people to train as therapists while still working today so that they will be ready to help when the challenge becomes a major problem in two to four years’ time.

There’s clearly a cost associated with enabling all these activities but we must ask ourselves what the risks and potential costs of inaction might be. A short term saving on costs could lead to a very long-term increase in the cost of funding unemployment benefits and policing a society that feels let down.

Rohit Talwar is a global futurist, keynote speaker, author, and CEO of Fast Future. Steve Wells is the COO of Fast Future and an experienced Strategist, Futures Analyst and Partnership Working Practitioner. Alexandra Whittington is a futurist, writer, faculty member on the Futures programme at the University of Houston and foresight director at Fast Future.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.